


B&E In Progress

by Crowley_Is_My_Copilot



Series: Dark Harlan [4]
Category: Justified
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Angst, Breaking and Entering, F/M, Fluff, bad ideas in the middle of the night, crime lords aren't much better, demons aren't good with feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-23
Updated: 2015-08-23
Packaged: 2018-04-16 19:04:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4636701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crowley_Is_My_Copilot/pseuds/Crowley_Is_My_Copilot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mic put down stakes in Harlan and discovers firsthand the penchant for crime when someone breaks into her home.</p><p>Except that someone is Boyd Crowder.</p><p>And he has a very interesting proposition for her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	B&E In Progress

**Author's Note:**

  * For [andy - as always](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=andy+-+as+always).



> This is based off a RP that's been going on for over a year and the first thing I've felt like writing in awhile. Feedback is always appreciated.

Mic had kept her word. She stayed in Harlan, even though there was a part of her that thought she should have left. It was too late for that and she knew it. Turning away from the window, evening fog rolling in off the hills and obscuring the green, she walked across the mostly empty living room to the slightly less empty kitchen. The small house was legally hers but it didn't feel like home just yet. She opened the fridge and stared blankly inside before shutting it, empty-handed.

It had been weeks since the late night kiss in Johnny's and while she hadn't been avoiding Boyd, she hadn't sought him out either. He seemed to notice, to give her the space she needed. Mic appreciated that and almost hated him for it. 

But she couldn't. It was part of his charm, she supposed.

She sat down on the seventy-five dollar couch from Goodwill and picked up the remote without turning the TV on. Her thoughts kept going back to the last time she had talked to Boyd. 

It had been around noon and the bar was mostly empty except for the man she recognized as Boyd's cousin and another man she saw often enough but couldn't put a name to. She thought it started with a 'J'. Come to think of it, she thought both of their names started with a 'J'. Boyd seemed oblivious to their expressions at her appearance but she noted it. 

"Looks like you're busy," she had said. "I'll come back."

"No need, no need." Boyd waved his hand. "We were just finishing up. I head you're puttin' down stakes, making it official." 

"Oh, yeah. I bought a house out on Ivy Street." She shifted on her feet and glanced towards the door.

The cousin coughed.

"I really should get going."

"We have that thing from Dixie."

Boyd looked back over his shoulder. 

"Right. Next time then, Miss Mic."

"Just Mic," she reminded him and left them to whatever plans - plans which Mic doubted the legality of - they had.

That had been three days ago and a flush of embarrassment still crept up when she thought about it. _I shouldn't have gone there, I should just forget the whole thing, I should just--_ Cutting off her train of thought, she finally turned on the TV to zone out to sound of Gordon Ramsay yelling until she got up and went to bed. Trying not to think about feelings and men in vests. She stared at the ceiling until she finally drifted to sleep. The mattress was a step up from the motel and she slept soundly, for once.

Maybe that was why she didn't notice something was off right away. But she did notice, eventually, blinking her eyes open in confusion. The first thing she was aware of was the sound of someone else breathing and she was awake instantly. Scrambling up onto her knees, she shoved the intruder out of the bed, hearing them hit the floor with a thump.

" **Ow**. Jesus Christ, woman, y'could've asked."

Mic had never rolled her eyes so hard and never had to work so hard not to smile. 

"Boyd--"

She crawled over to look off the edge of the bed at him. The sheet had been pulled half-down with him. It looked ridiculous. 

"Can I get off the floor or you gonna shove me again?"

"Get up," she said, moving back to the other side of the bed and propping herself up as she watched him climb onto the bed.

"That was a rude awakening."

Mic snorted.

"You know, I'm not going to ask how you got into my house but I will ask what you're doing in my bed."

"Breakin' and enterin' is up there on my list of greatest skills; that an' manufacturing the element of surprise." 

Her smile broke across her face.

"I like how you talk without answering the question. Why are you in my bed?"

"Seemed a little more forgiving than the bathtub?" He smiled and Mic thought about the first night they met. She was right, she could have used the light reflecting off his teeth. 

She sighed, letting herself fall onto the bed, and pressed her face against her pillow.

"Are you ever going to explain why you're here or...?"

“I could froth up some lie, suggest I was hiding from a pack of rabid dogs out for my liver, but I'll leave it up to your clever intuition to decipher.”

The smile faded into a frown. "You're either drunk or you just wanted my company. I'm going with the first one."

"Ain't deep enough in the night for the first one," he said, inching forward and his smile turning from open to sly. Like he was watching a carefully laid plan come to fruition. 

" _Boyd_." There was a hint of a warning in her voice this time. "I don't believe you're here just for my company."

“I don’t go sneekin’ into immortal’s tastefully decorated homesteads just to improvise a set-up, Mic. I’ve only got so much free time on m’hands.”

Then he moved forward and took the warning out of her mouth with a kiss. Mic tensed, still having a hard time believing that he wouldn't turn on her, but after a moment she kissed him back, fingers curled against her chest to stop her from running them across his cheek. When he pulled back, she blinked a few times, dark brown eyes wide. There was an odd expression on his face as if he was surprised he hadn't gone up in flames. It had been a possibility he considered when he climbed into her bed. 

"Is that what you came here for?"

"Would you rather I leave?"

She pursed her lips together and picked at a stray thread on her pillow. No, she didn't want him to leave but she also didn't want to tell him that. Mic was grateful that it was dark enough to hide her blush, annoyed that murder wasn't a solution right now.

"Can I trust you?" 

“Considerin’ my track record I’d be inclined to say not really, but then ‘gain lookin’ at your place upon this whole celestial chain, what do you really have to fear from me? Anything I could stir up would be trivial.”

"More than you'd think," she said quietly. What could she tell him? That he could throw her against a hundred enemies, against the host of Heaven itself, and she would smile. Battle was in her blood. Whatever this was, whatever was happening right now, wasn't. Somewhere in the back of her head, she was aware of all her demonic instincts raging against this. "I guess you can stay. I won't stab you."

"Not stabbing is always appreciated," he said, rolling flat on his back, he reached down and began unlacing his boots. Mic hid a smile behind her hand.

"It's still an option." 

There was no hiding the smile on his face, a laugh sounding in the otherwise quiet room.

"Darlin', violence is always a viable option." He tossed the boots on the ground and reached out, hand cupping the back of her neck.

"I like the way you think," she said, accent thickening with a laugh, holding still but not closing the distance between them. The bar had been a fluke, she told herself, she didn't make the first move. 

His free hand tugged the sheet from between them, closing the gap with a scoot of his hips, while the other moved from her neck to trace her jawline. Tipping her chin with two fingers, he pulled her face closer. She felt like a deer in the headlights, a feeling that was becoming all too familiar with him. He was the speeding car when that had always been her, carelessly leaving bodies on the side of the road. Swallowing, she wondered if she was going to end up a body on the side of some Harlan county road. 

"Who are you, really?" he asked.

"--I'm what they made me. They gave me a name and a job in Hell and that's all I've been ever since. Whoever I was before, it's all just vague memories. It doesn't matter. What I am is what I was made to be."

"So you were a soldier in someone else's grand design." There was empathy on his face and it hit her to her core. She took his wrist, dark fingers in contrast to his paler skin, and pulled his hand away slightly.

"What about you? What are you, besides a different kind of monster?"

"Who am I?" He slipped his hand downward, gently prying her fingers from his wrist to lace them with his and pressing their hands together against his chest. "Well, Mic, I'm Boyd Crowder... And I’ve got bullet bits next to m’heart, and the markin’s of hate tattooed across my body. I’m a man who used to preach the word of the lord to amass a holy army in attempts to destroy my worldly father. I’m a purveyor of spirits, dope and lies with little regard for honor or morality. I’m a man who’s loved and lost and murdered all within the same chorus. I ain’t ever been to Hell, but I’ve been risin’ to it slowly without even tryin'." He paused, free hand beginning to work the buttons on his shirt, eyes refusing to meet hers. "...and now you know."

"You've done a lot of things," she said quietly, inclining her head until she had almost touched his. "Hell isn't pleasant and you sound like that's where you're heading. They'll use everything you've ever done against you and turn you into a thing like me."

“I’ve been busy, but luckily my beliefs are flux enough that permanent circumstances like the residence of my immortal soul can remain somewhere in the unsubstantiated market.” He gave a chuckle, like that was a great joke, and pulled away to shrug his shirt off. Mic's eyes went to the scar on his chest and moved to the tattoo on his arm. He hadn't lied and there was an odd comfort in that. His face turned serious and he parroted her words. " _A thing like me_."

And then,

"--C'mere."

Hearing her words repeated back to her caused a flush on her face that she hid in the pillow for a moment before considering his request. Carefully, she moved closer, stopping just before they touched. "What do you want?"

There was a sudden heaviness in the air the moment the question left her mouth and she desperately wished she could take it back. Take it back and remove that sad look in his eyes as he brushed strands of her tangled black hair back and trailed his fingers over her face. She closed her eyes and sighed, ready for whatever the answer would be.

"I think I want you to save me."

"Boyd." There was something about the way his name tasted in her mouth that she relished but this time the sadness on his face was mimicked in her tone. "I'm a demon, not an angel. I damn people, I don't save them. I think you should know that about me. If I could..."

"Don't worry, Mic, I'm just shittin' you," he said, laughing though it lacked the typical humor and moving away from her as he claimed a section of the mattress for himself. “Nah, I don’t want anythin’ from you, I just figured a little bit of company to pass the time before my inevitability wouldn’t hurt. The poetry of it bein’ that we ain’t too far off from each other- and for all the things I’m really damn good at expectin’, this wasn’t one of ‘em.”

"You're an asshole. You break into my home just so you don't have to feel alone?" If she had ever been on a roller coaster, she would have recognized the sensation in her stomach as the same one when you dropped off the precipice. It felt like something had been taken from her and she didn't even understand what it was. Had she hoped for something more? Mic fixed him with a dark look and rolled over, pulling the blanket up under her chin. 

She couldn't see the expression on his face and that might have been a good thing. He sidled up behind her, arms draping across her hips, sharp slant of his nose pressing into the back of her neck. The tension in her body began to fade when his lips touched her skin.

“…' _If you could_.' What does that mean? If you could— …you would? Save this old dog from his predestined fate, that is?”

"I don't know. I think I would. I don't know why, but I think I would if I could. I can't, though. I can't save you anymore than you can save me."

His grip on her tightened as he pulled her closer. She let him.

"Maybe together we can make an exception to all this."

Mic placed her hand over his, tracing her fingers along his knuckles. There were a hundred words she wanted to say but none of them made it past her lips. It was no good because she had suddenly realized what she thought had been taken from her a moment ago. Hope. She had hoped for something and thought she had lost it and now she was pretty sure he had just handed it back to her. Whatever it was.

_**Shit**. I'm fucked._

_God damn it._

"Mic?"

"Go to sleep."

She could feel him smiling against the base of her neck.

 

 

 

 


End file.
